User reviews

Daniel Craig is clearly making an effort to put down some markers with his post Bond choices. I don't blame him, it's such a suffocating role. The polar opposite, here he's William, a gay American in 1950s Mexico. A very William S. Burroughs premise, who wrote the generally autobiographical book this is based on. It's not Naked Lunch, but it does have an unsettling vibe. Not helped by unusual needle drops from Nirvana, Prince and New Order that just don't fit. William is lonely... and horny. So really, William is frustrated. That is until he meets Eugene (Drew Starkey) and they bond over war stories in the dry heat that drips from the screen. William is infatuated, but doesn't know if the younger Eugene is, or if he's even queer. It doesn't help that William has a self-deprecating, unconfident nature, although vast amounts of cheap booze and cigarettes seem to help. It's an awkward love/lust story, with a lob-sided feeling that William is destined to be hurt. Panama hats, linen suits, glass coke bottles and rusting Cadillacs driving down sunburnt dusty streets, past the daytime drinkers. There's a sordid, lazy, quietly hedonistic tone. Where time is largely irrelevant. The perfect place for William to wallow in a heroin stupor as Eugene leads him on, encourages him, pushes him away. Things don't change much as William tries to whisk Eugene away on a trip to Ecuador, but he does at least have him to himself. William's on a mission though, to source a plant that produces the drug Yage (nope me neither), that's said to give the user a telepathic experience. Here the music does get interesting. Scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, although still oddly modern, it depicts perfectly William's obsessive and destructive nature. One that leads him deep into the jungle to find Dr Cotter (Lesley Manville). Who helps both William and Eugene discover things that they already knew. It's all very striking, but I'm not sure that's enough. Craig is pretty fantastic, but Queer did lose me toward the end, even though I'm a big fan of some Lynchian style surrealism. Ultimately I think Burroughs is just better on the page, but this is still an interesting adaptation.

I hadn't planned on seeing Queer in the movie theatre and was going to wait till it came to streaming but a friend wanted to see it so I went along. I'm actually glad that I did because it's a very interesting and beautiful film visually speaking. Like most Burroughs stories there will be characters involved in heavy drug use and so I was aware of that and kind of expecting much of the story to be told through a characters drug hazed/influenced/induced eyes. That can be tricky as much of the story is expressed via metaphors and odd/quirky/hard to decipher visuals. In Queer that all worked quite well and while I anticipated possibly leaving the theatre confused and wondering, I actually left satisfied. Trent Reznor produced all of the music and I think he did a bang-on job with most of the music really hitting the nail on the head for me emotionally. As for the performances, Craig turned in a very solid performance on a role that was a tricky one to pull off but I think he did indeed pull it off quite well. Jason Schwartzman was great and his character provided some much needed levity to this film. All of the remaining characters were all solid supporters and contributors. Guadagnino's direction was well executed and i will say seeing a few of his that he does have a special way of blending the camera, with the lighting, and the music so perfectly during the lighter and more tender moments of his films to really generate a vibe, yet without being too obvious soas to smother the moment. I do think the third part in the jungle could have benefitted from some prudent editing as I felt like it went on a bit too long, or maybe it didn't really need to take actually take place in a jungle at all? Something to consider. Queer is not an 'easy' film to watch and it will not be for everyone. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by how effective, interesting, amd moving Queer was and consider it well worth checking out.

The main reason is that the film was too abstract and seemed like a stream of consciousness. The general meaning is to explore the loneliness in the queer heart, the difficulty in establishing connections with others, the pain of not being able to love, and the complex emotions of depression. But the performance technique is very stream-of-consciousness, especially the last 20 minutes, which have almost no lines and are completely used to express the inner world of the male protagonist through various blurs, hallucinations, and abstract art forms. Although I understood what the director wanted to express, the form of expression may not be acceptable to the public, and I wanted to leave the scene at one point.

Luca Guadagnino's Queer is a frustrating, meandering experience that left me checking the time more than engaging with the story. Between this and Challengers, I'm slowly losing hours off my life.

From the outset, Queer feels like one of those late-night foreign films you'd stumble across on cable at 2 AM. Artsy but hollow, slow but never rewarding. The sex scenes feel forced, the strange music choices are jarring and frequently cut off with no rhyme or reason, and the AI-generated backgrounds are glaringly obvious and breaks immersion.

Not even Daniel, Trent, and Atticus can salvage this one. Their performances, while competent, are weighed down by a script that lacks momentum and characters who seem aimless. Guadagnino's direction comes across as self-indulgent. There's an undeniable pretentiousness to it all.

I keep holding out hope that Luca's films will eventually pick up, that something will happen to justify the investment, but it never does. Queer is the final stop for me on the Luca train. I'd rather put on a telenovela and at least be entertained while I drift off to sleep.

Luca Guadagnino is already a guarantee of something unique and in my case, uniquely familiar. I was profoundly moved by Queer and Daniel Craig's performance, I don't know how to describe it. He showed, yes showed, the mystery of desire in such a tender and powerful way. His intimate scenes with the spectacular Drew Starkey are a first for the screen because those moments are a combination of things and none of it is gratuitous or unnecessary. The amazing thing is that is impossible to guess it was needed until we see it. Now it lives in my brain, constantly. Every bit of the film seems to come out Luca Guadagnino's beautiful mind and I can say that after seeing most of his films. Who's idea was the casting of Lesley Manville? Not just surprising but superb. I'm over the moon. Thank you.

Daniel Craig did a good job in his role and the scenery/asthetic was pretty cool. Beautifully filmed, but you're always going to get that with a Luca film. It was quite off-putting by how slow and languid it was. Well-acted, well written, but just boring.

Synopsis: 1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, an expat former soldier, new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.

Queer

Based on a short story by William Burroughs this movie explored the dissolute life of middled aged William Lee, who spent his time frequenting the gay bars in downtown Mexico City. It really was a simple romantic movie that looked at an infatuation with innocence and a journey to recovery from drug addiction.

The story, such as it was was tissue thin, very little happened by way of action, and we had inserted numerous dream sequences and fantasy elements that reflected in an emotional turmoil.

Overall I can't recommend this movie. It was at best of 5 out of 10. I enjoyed it whilst I was watching it but it really had very little substance. Despite some very strong acting from the central leads much of the dialogue was banal and tedious.

Luca Guadagnino never stops surprising me. For me he is one of the most creative, unconventional and uncompromising contemporary european movie directors.

And once more he's immensely successful here in creating a kind of stream of consciousness of an older expat, somewhat stranded in Mexico, falling in love with an attractive but distant much younger man. Daniel Craig's courageous performance is nothing else than brilliant, a study in loneliness and drug addiction, yearning for a love, which he knows best himself, will never realize itself.

The core of desire might be that it can never be fulfilled. You loose it the moment you get what you were longing for.

I was totally fascinated by the hypnotic camera, the elegant artificiality of the set design, the magical realism and the drug and dream sequences of the movie. The unforgettable last frame of this film will haunt me for a long time.

It's definitely not for everybody, because it seems to be a very personal passion project, but people who don't like swimming with the mainstream will be very satisfied.

I was deeply moved by Call Me by Your Name; suffice to say, it left a lasting impact on me. As a heterosexual myself, I never anticipated that a love story between two individuals of the same sex could resonate so profoundly. It opened a doorway for me and inspired me to delve deeper into other LGBTQ stories.

Regrettably, I cannot extend the same level of admiration to "Queer."

While the performances by Craig and Starkey are commendable, their characters or rather the storytelling at core did not resonate with me. Intricacies of the relationship too failed to evoke the kind of emotional response I was expecting.

However, the final thirty minutes of the film provides an extraordinary experience, offering a sense of catharsis that is quite experimental, even for a filmmaker like Luca Guadagnino, who often deviates from traditional narratives.

Though I loved 'Call me by your name', and definitely love Daniel Craig in a lot of movies this one is different and not in a good way. It actually took me quite some time to finish it, for me it felt it took way to long and at times lost my interest completely.

The way they tell the story and use metaphors for a lot of things, just didnt do it for me with this movie.

Some parts of the story are to long and boring imo and just dont grab me the way they should. And a lot of times it feels a bit weird, strange or a bit to typical.

The good thing about this is the performance of Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey.

I'm all for using movies to evoke some type of emotion but this movie took that quite literally by combining random images with random music and hoping we feel what the director felt. There's almost no connection between anything. It's like the writer took a bunch of pills, got high, and wrote the script. Then the director and the whole cast smoked a ton of weed and then made this. Whatever this is.

Trust me, I know very well what the director was going for. I'm gay. I know all about the queer culture, how lonely it is, and how we all long for a lasting connection with someone much younger and hotter than us. This movie makes that very clear. And I love that it explored that. But why was it necessary to get high to do that?? The whole thing feels like a hallucination trip. There is minimal dialog. There are looooooong scenes with no dialog at all. Sometimes for 5-10 minutes. We're just staying on a close up of someone's face or watching them perform an action but ultimately nothing is happening on screen except for some subtle movement which is just not enough to keep you engaged or interested.

Thank god I watched this at home and I could fast forward. Many times I skipped forward 20-30 seconds and it was STILL the same exact shot on screen. That's crazy!! That's not movie making. That's not a masterpiece. You're not being some kind of genius by boring us to death. You can't just play an upbeat tempo song for 5 minutes and show us one shot and think that will do the trick.

As far as the acting goes... I can't believe Daniel Craig did this. I'm talking full nudity, full on gay sex, tons of making out... the whole 9 yards.

The Mexico setting was a complete miss in this one. It did not fit the theme at all. The sets were ridiculous. They were very well made but just completely wrong for this movie.

I was a huge fan of Call me By Your Name but I think this might have been the last Luca movie I'll ever see. At least for a while. My time was completely wasted.

I'm late to the party with this movie, but I just finished watching Queer (2024) and this movie was a very disappointing experience for me especially coming from Luca Guadagnino and A24.

Positives for Queer (2024): The movie is shot and directed expertly by Luca Guadagnino. The performances from Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey are very good. The themes that are being explored in the movie are done very well. And finally, the movie has a unique style to how the filmmaking is being portrayed here.

Negatives for Queer (2024): The movie is too long and the pacing drags it down a lot. The movie was being a little too weird for me. And finally, there are moments where I wasn't paying attention to what was happening on screen.

Overall, Queer (2024) is a great movie on a technical aspect, but it's one that lost my interest a lot and it was very average.

In order to escape drug possession charges in the United States, the hero came to Mexico City and indulged himself. . . I also tried to write, but mostly wandered the streets, immersing myself in brothels, cockfights and bars. . . When he saw the lanky, bespectacled Eugene on the street, he was smitten. At first, their flirtatious glances were just a playful cat-and-mouse game. Lee's initial attempts at contact hit a wall, but Eugene gradually began to socialize with him in bars. But Eugene eventually left, and two years later, Lee returned to Mexico City, with these cryptic words lingering in a haunting coda, when the image of Eugene in his mind was pitted against Burroughs himself and Vollmer. That painful past is intertwined.

The chemistry in this film is unreal.

What a beautiful film by Guadagnino about desire as something transcendental and, at the same time, a burden.

A film that beautifully captures a story rich in almost supernatural eroticism about bodies and touches.

I'm happy to see this film, but it's not for everyone, especially those who don't want to embrace all the narrative's curveballs.

With a mysterious ending and sex scenes that may seem exaggerated to some prudes, Guadagnino is one of the few greats working who hasn't given up on lust as an instrument in his stories, and that's beautiful.

Queer shows an extraordinary capture through sound design and hallucinatory representation of how sex is such a powerful experience for humans and a fundamental part of being human that it cannot be omitted from stories due to the public's complacency, Queer challenges you.

The art direction and photography are excellent, with beautiful scene composition and excellent acting. Daniel Craig can break your heart by doing very little and Queer seems to be just another stage on this new journey alongside Knives Out of someone who wants to be more than an iconic 007.

I hadn't read the book, so I expected the first part, with its aimless partying, to be the whole movie and was just watching it casually. But then Allerton started playing his games, and I began to pay attention.

The second part was surprisingly good-romantic and sensual, but also thrilling-though unfortunately, it didn't sustain that energy until the end. Burroughs' symbolism is deeply personal; unless you're familiar with his life, much of it remains indiscernible. For it to truly work, we either need to see how the symbols are constructed or they must be archetypal.

As in All of Us Strangers, the main theme is human existential loneliness, making the queerness of the characters feel redundant in both cases. Although I'm a fan, I find that Edward Hopper's aesthetic looks unpleasantly artificial when in motion.

All in all, much better than expected, but not particularly memorable.

I was drawn to this movie as a queer person myself and also due to the fact that it is an A24 film with a star studded cast. However, I think this film tried too hard to be something different and deep.

To start off, I had no idea what the characters were saying 75% of the time. I needed subtitles so badly, their accents were so difficult to understand. Additionally, the film lacks so much context, and when it does give some, it does so in such a -blink and you'll miss it- type of way.

Things just happen so quickly and inexplicably and I was left confused and unsettled for most of the movie. I feel like you really have to analyze things and apply meaning to the symbolism, and personally that's just not something I like to do TOO extensively when watching a movie. I go the theater to relax and have a good time, not sit there confused and forced to do mental jumping jacks for two hours. Perhaps it is a personal preference or maybe I am too dumb for this movie, but I did not enjoy it in the slightest.

The characters are not interesting and their development is not satisfying. There's no romance despite it focusing on a relationship for the most part. A good portion of the movie is composed of trippy dream-like sequences which are uncomfortable to watch. Overall I hated this movie and could not wait for it to be over. I paid $16 to watch this and regret it so much. In today's economy, I hate leaving the movie theater disappointed and longing for enjoyable cinema.

It's almost impossible to put into words just how much of an under-appreciated masterpiece this film is. *Queer* transcends gender and lays bare the painful, lonely, and silent heartache of rejection and unreciprocated love-emotions that many experience, not just in romance but across all relationships.

While the film doesn't elaborately explore rejection in depth from every sphere of life, the way rejection is portrayed transcends its immediate context. Through Lee's experience, the film taps into something deeply universal, allowing anyone who has faced rejection-whether from friends, family or society-to see themselves reflected in his story. If you've ever felt this, you will find yourself deeply connecting with the movie-provided you allow yourself to truly see it for what it is.

The pacing of this film is exceptional. Some complain that it's too slow, but speeding it up would strip away the raw, heart-wrenching portrayal of loneliness in Lee's life. The film masterfully captures his rare ability to love passionately, fearlessly, and completely, as well as the deep fear of rejection that haunts him. This is especially evident in his relationship with a capricious, ambivalent lover-someone unable to fully accept himself, let alone love as openly and wholeheartedly as Lee needs.

I deeply admired Lee's character-his ability to love so profoundly and unconditionally. Even when his love seemed futile, he persisted, seeking telepathy as a last, desperate attempt to achieve unity, to bridge the gap between him and the one he loved. And my- the way eagerly intense passionate romantic love is portrayed by Lee without reservation, is rarely successfully found at all in cinema. Cinematic portrayal of love and "pure" fervent lust is usually underwhelming and hallow.

If you're looking for a shallow, easygoing film, this is not it. The depth of emotion in *Queer* is rare in cinema, and usually only well-depicted in literature. Yet here, Daniel Craig's portrayal of Lee-coupled with Guadagnino's rich symbolism-brings to life the saying, *"A picture is worth a thousand words."* In this case, a moving picture is worth even more.

Greetings again from the darkness. Some filmmakers have earned the benefit of the doubt to the point where each film they release is worthy of consideration. Luca Guadagnino is one such filmmaker. He first captured my attention with I AM LOVE (2009) and has since followed that with such interesting films as A BIGGER SPLASH (2015), CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017), SUSPIRIA (2018), BONES AND ALL (2022), and CHALLENGERS, his first film released in 2024. This time he and his CHALLENGERS screenwriter, Justin Kuritzkes, take on the 1985 William S Burroughs novella, "Queer", which was linked to his 1953 novel, "Junkie". Taking on the writing of William S Burroughs is challenging enough as a reader, much less as a filmmaker.

Daniel Craig stars as William Lee. If you are familiar with Burroughs' writing, then you are aware the character of William Lee shares many of the same personal attributes as Burroughs himself. He's a gay man who drinks too much, does hard drugs, and is quite sexually promiscuous. The film opens with Chapter 1: How do you like Mexico? Lee spends his time drinking non-stop and carousing for his next roll in the proverbial hay. He has a few fellow ex-pat friends, including Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman), but it's a certain cool cat that catches his eye. Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) is a young ex-soldier and Lee is quickly enamored.

The two hang out together, although Lee is never really certain if Eugene is gay or not since he spends much of his time playing chess with fellow bar patron, Mary (Andra Ursula). One night of passion between Lee and Eugene leads to Chapter 2: Travel Companions. The two men make their way to South America as their awkward relationship (and agreement) leads to more booze. Chapter 3: The Botanist in the Jungle is certainly one of the most bizarre segments of any movie this year, as the men hike deep in the jungle to connect with a doctor who has researched some 'vegetation' that may solve Lee's fascination/obsession with telepathy. There is no viable description for this segment, but kudos to anyone who recognizes Leslie Manville - the one who has a pet sloth and keeps a viper for home security.

The Epilogue picks up two years later, and it's here where Lee's long struggle with loneliness becomes most apparent. His time with Eugene provides home of a true, lasting relationship with something other than a tequila bottle or a heroin needle. Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey are both excellent here, and may each receive awards consideration. If your previous exposure to Mr. Craig is through the James Bond movies, you might find this role a bit surprising, but those who have followed his career are in the know.

Opening in theaters on December 6, 2024.

It's too long, and it meanders most dully. I have no idea how it would appear to anyone who knows nothing of Burroughs, or what they might enjoy about it. I have to state that I don't like looking at Daniel Craig - some faces are repellent, and the idea that he might be considered attractive is alien to me. I had Dirk Bogarde's performance in Death In Venice in my head throughout, in a way completely unflattering to the ex-Bond. His performance has no nuances. He is incapable of portraying lust, or pleasure, or jealousy; you know he is feeling those because of an action rather than his demeanour. He also fails to be a convincing junkie, as shivering is not enough. Where is the craving that inspires others to murder? Drew Starkey as the object of his affections is similarly flat and unemotional. I wanted a parallel hunger for them both from Craig, instead of which I felt he quite liked them, compared to the tedium of the rest of his life. The best actor in it, by far, is Lesley Manville, who whilst playing the apogee of her usual type, is perfect. The book was unfinished when published, and I found this ending touching and satisfying in a way that the rest of the film lacked.

Luca Guadagnino's Queer attempts to translate William S. Burroughs' semi-autobiographical novel into cinema, but it stumbles along the way. The film boasts a visually stunning backdrop and a heartfelt performance by Daniel Craig, yet the disjointed narrative and indulgent pacing hold it back from greatness.

Craig imbues William Lee with vulnerability, but the obsessive fixation on Eugene Allerton, portrayed by Drew Starkey, lacks the depth needed for genuine emotional resonance. The chemistry between the leads is insufficient to spark the tension that the story hinges upon.

Guadagnino's signature aesthetic is unmistakable, with lush cinematography and a thoughtfully curated soundtrack. However, these elements cannot overcome a narrative weighed down by uneven pacing and heavy symbolism. The episodic structure struggles to maintain momentum, making certain scenes feel repetitive and aimless.

For fans of Guadagnino or experimental storytelling, Queer offers moments of visual and auditory delight, but it falls short of delivering an emotionally profound or memorable cinematic journey.

Rating: 7/10 - A visually rich yet emotionally distant adaptation.